Friday, July 24, 2009

Good news for nuke power in Japan

Good news for the nuclear power industry in Japan; the news hadn't been so good for awhile. Japan is one example that shows an industrialized nation can get a significant amount of energy from non-fossil fuel sources and still be competitive; alert Sarah Palin, willya?

Japan reactor gets go-ahead

Two years after it shut down following an earthquake, the world's largest nuclear station has won approval from the Japanese government to commercially operate one of its seven reactors.


Other short excerpts from this article:

Tokyo Electric has posted losses since the plant's closure two years ago, forcing it to switch to more expensive fossil fuels. In the first quarter of this year, Tokyo Electric's power sales to industrial users dropped 5.8 percent.


and this important point, which seems fairly astonishing to the burn-as-you-go crowd:

Japan currently depends on 55 nuclear reactors for 30 percent of its electricity.

Getting the Kashiwazaki Kariwa station back online completely is a very important step to maintain the vitality of nuclear power as a fossil fuel (which I also like to call the "dead-end fuel") alternative.

It's a very clean and lovely site, if you're into things like this (one has to get used to my aesthetic sensibilities of an energetic kind):

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